Why is it that we open books like this with trepidation? The cover illustration is alluring, yet you nevertheless can't help fearing the worst.
The answer is probably that we expect an indigestible combination of not quite idiomatic English and stories that, though quaint, are less than masterly. If the selection had been of Japanese tales, you feel, the manner would have been assured and the translations, probably done in the US, top rank. But, for whatever reason, we don't expect an anthology of Chinese short fiction to be very convincing.
This collection mostly confirms these suspicions, though it provides a few exceptions to them as well. The editors' formula has been to mix stories previously published in English by Beijing's Chinese Literature Press with others that one of the editors, Carolyn Choa, has translated herself.
For the most part the tales deal with a single character with a problem. One is about the frustrations of a mother whose child is almost exactly the height at which he has to buy a ticket to ride on a bus or enter a park, another about how a woman from Shanghai's formerly affluent class fares under communism and another about an English girl who wants to star in Chinese opera.
The General and the Small Town by Chen Shi-xu is typical of this type of story. A retired general comes to live in a remote country town. It's rumored that he's been dismissed from the army for political offences. He turns out, however, to be a concerned and public-spirited individual who the townspeople soon take to their hearts. On his death, they give him a lavish funeral, despite opposition from the mayor. Human values win over the dictates of the party and through a change of policy in far-away Beijing, he's eventually given public recognition.
One excellent story is Fate by Shi Tiesheng, beautifully translated by Michael S. Duke. It features a student who is about to leave for four years' study in the US when his bicycle hits an aubergine and he's confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In spite of the depressing subject, it's told with extraordinary wit and panache, and uses a non-realistic technique of dividing the narrative into numerous sections, just as a modernist painter might artificially fragment his canvas. The author has twice won China's National Best Short Story award.
Another prominent writer represented here is Zhang Jie. Her story, Love Must Not Be Forgotten, concerns a woman of 30 who, despite feeling she may soon be too old to marry, nevertheless rejects a loveless match. "To be single is not such a fearful disaster," concludes the independent-minded narrator. "I believe it may be a sign of a step forward in culture, education and the quality of life."
It's not surprising that this narrator possesses a set of Chekhov's short stories. These stand for exactly the kind of introspective moodiness so often missing from Chinese fiction, though with plenty of social matter included as well. Nineteenth century Russia was arguably in a comparable state of development to China today, but the way its authors looked to France for their models contrasts strongly with the general self-sufficiency of China's modern writers. Zhang is an exception to this rule.
What makes these stories different from what you'd expect to find in a similar collection from Europe, the US, South America or Japan is that the political and social setting is so prominent. This is not to say that the stories toe a political line -- in fact they often show someone who defies what the party expects of them. But this pattern of the authorities laying down one code of behavior and a particular individual opting for another soon becomes predictable, and as a result almost monotonous.
Presumably the Chinese Literature Press is not allowed uncensored freedom in what it publishes. Nevertheless, it likely takes pleasure in the relative freedoms allowed it from time to time. But to outsiders these subtleties are of only relative interest.
The term "contemporary" in the book's title is of dubious validity. The dates of the items included range from 1978 to 1998, with one from 1957. But the main problem is the limited sources from which the editors derive their material. China is a big place, but you nevertheless expect certain names to appear in an anthology of this kind, and they don't. There is, for instance, no Mo Yan, no Liang Xiaosheng, and no Wang Shuo. It is not taking sides politically to say that a far more enjoyable collection is a recent one of stories by Taiwanese women writers. Called City Women (Renditions Paperbacks, 2001), this contains one tale apiece from Huang Ying (
Each tale is set in Taipei, and the translations are new, even though the originals appeared between 1985 and 1990. There are absconding gay husbands, drug-taking in hot-springs, profit-taking gigolos, and disasters on the stock exchange. Chu Tian-hsin's story is as exotically colored as a rainbow, whereas Huang's is marked by a severe, riveting irony. But what makes these stories so satisfying is the strong personality of each of the writers. This is far more marked than in Vintage's volume.
The collection has been masterminded by the Chinese University of Hong Kong's indefatigable Eva Hung (孔慧怡), responsible for a wide swathe of English translations over the years. Translating two of these five tales herself, she's also ensured that the strong aura of each of the authors comes over in incisive but lively translations.
Does this say something about Taiwanese vis-a-vis mainland society? Probably, but not necessarily. There are fireworks available from mainland writers not represented in the Vintage collection. Hung, by contrast, has taken five of Taiwan's top women writers, then chosen one outstanding story from each of them. And in the end, as always, it's the quality that tells.
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